Last week, our colleague Roger Kimball asked whether the New York Times health insurance included psychiatric coverage, because, he quipped, it seemed by her outrageous columns that Maureen Dowd probably needed it. Evidently Ms. Dowd did not take Roger’s suggestion to heart, because yesterday — the eve of Rosh Hashanah — she insulted her Jewish readers by writing a column that depended on one of the oldest of anti-Semitic tropes: that smart Jews manage to bamboozle their Christian friends by pulling the wool over their eyes and getting them to unwittingly do their bidding.

Politico’s Dylan Beers sorts out the reaction to her Sunday opinion piece, writing that her critics charged that it “peddled anti-Semitic imagery.” The column in question was titled “Neocons Slither Back.” In that piece, Dowd outdoes her usual vitriolic and nasty voice with a screed that makes one pause and take a deep breath, wondering how anyone with half an ounce of intelligence could take her seriously.

She began with an attack on Paul Ryan for his daring to argue that the country needs a foreign policy with “moral clarity and firmness of purpose.” Congressmen Ryan’s statement is hardly offensive; indeed, given the utter failure of Barack Obama’s Middle East policy, it is understated. Ms. Dowd has the right to disagree and to argue with Ryan’s case. But rather than do that, she wrote the following:

Ryan was moving his mouth, but the voice was the neocon puppet master Dan Senor. The hawkish Romney adviser has been secunded to manage the running mate and to graft a Manichaean worldview onto the foreign affairs neophyte.

A moral, muscular foreign policy; a disdain for weakness and diplomacy; a duty to invade and bomb Israel’s neighbors; a divine right to pre-emption — it’s all ominously familiar.

You can draw a direct line from the hyperpower manifesto of the Project for the New American Century, which the neocons, abetted by Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, used to prod an insecure and uninformed president into invading Iraq — a wildly misguided attempt to intimidate Arabs through the shock of overwhelming force. How’s that going for us?

As in the Bush 43 years, Ms. Dowd continues, the neocons have managed to again capture a would-be future Republican president even before he’s elected. “Before he played ventriloquist to Ryan,” Dowd writes, “Senor did the same for Romney, ratcheting up the candidate’s irresponsible bellicosity on the Middle East.” So, she concludes, Romney is already “kowtowing to the right again.” And this, she adds for emphasis, is “shameful.” If Romney were commander-in-chief and agreed with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s desire to set a red line beyond which Iran should not be allowed to cross, the result would be a “global conflagration” that would be a worldwide disaster.

39 Comments, 28 Threads

This report shocks even me, and I thought I was beyond shock. I did mention the regnant antisemitism in my Rosh Hashanah blog http://clarespark.com/2012/09/16/thought-crimes/. I need not feel guilty over the emphasis I put on that still powerful animus, that goes unrecognized by the majority of non-Jews and even Jews themselves. Good job, Ron, but oh that it was even necessary is a shanda.

You’re shocked at blatant anti-Semitism and I don’t even see it. That’s a pretty wide gulf. It’s the hysterical code and dog-whistle nonsense liberals indulge in and which requires mind-reading, a skill I do not have.

In fact, I have been sounding the alarm bells on this very issue, and many are finally waking up – most especially blinded Jews!

As such, the reaction to the following has stirred a hornet’s nest, but that is a good thing – /2012/08/08/leftism-lethal-to-jews-their-overall-health-others-too-commentary-by-adina-kutnicki/

And, since NYC was my stomping grounds for years, surely I recognized the seepage of anti-semitism into party politics, as well as within its NY Times halls of slime, cheered on by leftist profs/props – /2012/06/27/anti-semitism-anti-zionism-takes-center-stage-in-nyc-democratic-primary-race-heres-the-results-commentary-by-adina-kutnickii-2/

Nevertheless, Dowd and her fellow travelers should understand the following – leftist Jews within her purview are not in the same league as Zionist Jews in Israel. Strong Jews are the majority in Israel, as opposed to the small percent of leftists, however vocal they are. Therefore, whether her head flies off or not, our enemies will get clobbered, and she will have nothing to say about from her venemous perch to change our course – /2012/07/20/non-quenchable-jew-hatred-jewish-justice-necessitates-revenge-the-more-punishing-the-better-nothing-less-will-suffice-commentary-by-adina-kutnicki-152/

Reagan learned the hard way a lesson that we all should keep in mind:
“Sometimes close allies act contrary to American interests and values. Failing to exert American power to uphold those interests and values can have disastrous consequences: for our allies, for our moral standing and most important, for the innocent people who pay the highest price of all.”

What a brainless and atrocious column! Resorting to open incitement against a minority in this way would be unthinkable from any respectable right-wing publication, and I should have considered it unthinkable from the Times itself. I hope the owners of that paper will have the courage at least to censure her, or better yet fire her.

So I am to assume from her position that for us to aid our ally Israel is to copitulate to them. Hmmmm…………There were in days gone by a sentiment of shame attached to anyone who dare share those racist remarks about Jews. Now it seems to be the thing to do. My what 4 years have done to this country.

“So I am to assume from her position that for us to aid our ally Israel is to copitulate to them.”

This is the most common form of rhetoric in propaganda and biased political discourse: the false dichotomy.

“We can either ignore Israel or give in to their selfish needs that hurt us.”

Both are incorrect. Israel’s future and success is tied to American hegemony and world stability. If we we stupid and completely devoid of morality, and decided to stop supporting Israel, you’d get fluffy words of praise from the same actors who took over the “Arab Spring” nations.

I can’t imagine how it could be more clear how crucial it is to support Israel. It was bad letting “strong men” fail because they struck the best pragmatic balance possible. Now what do we have?

If you think we failed by allowing Islamists to take over after these strong men in Egypt and elsewhere, how on earth can you then say that Israel does not deserve the full support of the USA? Israel is the lynchpin of our foreign policy in the region and the globe. If we fail to adequately support Israel, we lose all credibility forever. Islamists realize this too. That is part of what they want. The genocidal maniacs with blood directly on their hands are mere tools. The truly evil leaders know precisely what I’ve explained here.

People say that Islamists attack the USA because of Israel, but Israel is just as often attacked politically because of its relationship with the USA. We failed to keep the Islamists in check since the end of WWI, and we failed to keep out Communist traitors from taking over the universities and eventually most jobs with influence over the constituents.

The reason it won’t be a tipping point for many Jews is that many Jews think of themselves as swinging withit secularists first and Jews maybe third. And how can you vote Republican and remain in the ranks of the swinging withits? You can’t. That status can only be maintained by pulling the Democrat lever. Which they will continue to do. Slavishly.

I see the reasoning behind the connection you are making, Mr. Radosh – there seems to be a TWINGE of IMPLIED antisemitism – and I also think I understand your sensitivity. But I’m also sick unto nauseousness at the endless seeking out of dog whistles by both sides (though their level of derangement on this subject has reached stratospheric elevations).

But the menopausal Dowd is free to rant, and of course you are free to criticize, but her vitriol is simply met by your (in my opinion) slightly overblown umbrage – it all eventually devolves into babble.

That’s not to say there isn’t a malignant and rising tide of menacing and fascist rhetoric on the Left – and the nexus has never been clearer than in the person of Obama, that the retrograde forces of Islam, Anarchy, and Communism are in confluence.

Obama is a Frankenstein monster. He is the synthesis of the Red (communism), the Green (Islam), and the Black (representing both Anarchist terror and the toxin of Black Liberation Theology). I believe Obama and his press lackies are a dire menace to America. But we also seem to be living in a time when so many people attack other people whenever they speak that all perspective is lost, and words fail to have meaning or impact.

The Left’s endless slanders of “racism” “dog whistles” and, again I apologize, but your almost singular focus on anti-Semitism have become an almost indecipherable cacophony. I already tune out what that wicked woman has to say. I bluntly suggest you are probably making others tune out to you and PJM. Is that really what you want?

Sorry to bring it up but RACISM has been over used ,it lost it’s sting,a more potent word should be STUPIDITY, people are still touchy about this word,it implies permanent state getting crashed by reality. The Left is running out of options, they still use a barrel loading gun, slow and the powder is wet from all those tears.The voter got them into the office they should get them out with a vote. Maybe the teachers union in Chicago should teach us all what the Left is all about ME,Me the hell with the rest of you and your children who cares they are too stupid to learn anyway.

If the NYT’s Rosenthal avers that Dowd’s column in no way refers to anyone’s religion, well then, let’s dispense with all the “racist dog-whistle” alarums that the Left reflexively (nay, devotedly) sound all the time in response to criticisms of Dear Leader. Sauce for goose and gander, and all that, after all.

That’s rich coming from a whore for the liberal Democrats, whose legacy includes 600,000 American war dead over the last 100 years, thanks to the collective genius of Wilson, Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy and Johnson.

I’ll take the war-obsessed Republicans over the peacenik liberal Dems any old day of the week.

Maureen Dowd is ignorant, foolish – and a bad writer. She thinks a laughably pretentious sentence like “The hawkish Romney adviser has been secunded to manage the running mate and to graft a Manichaean worldview onto the foreign affairs neophyte” constitutes good writing (and the lowbrow readers of the Times think so too).
The Jewish-neocon-puppetmaster line, clearly insinuated in Dowd’s piece, is merely visceral, the result of intellectual laziness and a by-product of stupidity and ignorance. The vices of the NYT are all on disply here.

I don’t see that that sentence is pretentious, although it employs a word that does not exist. What makes it bad is the “Manichean worldview” (a cliche that never meant anything), “neophyte” (one of the tiresome vogue-words of political writing these days), and the bizzare idea that one can “graft” a worldview onto a person.

In spite of such flaws, Maureen Dowd still writes better than every regular contributor to PJ Media, I daresay.

Dowd is insufferable no question, but “slithering” was a response to Paul Wolfowitz’s use of the word slither in reference to Obama in his Fox news interview. Was Wolfowitz being anti-Semitic towards Obama? The issue with Dowd is stupidity not racism.

As for Senor and neoconservatism, to claim that he’s not a neocon just because he worked for Bremmer implies that there is one “line” that all neocons adhere to when in fact they have all sorts of different positions when it comes to the Middle East, e.g look at the differences between, say, Elliott Abrams and Frank Gaffney on the Arab Spring!

Senor qualifies as a neocon IMHO because he helped found the Foreign Policy Initiative with Kristol and Kagan and, more generally, because of his strong espousal of an engaged assertive America supporting freedom abroad.

I agree Dowd is an idiot, but we need to be sharper in our critiques or we simply give the other side an out.

Crying “racist” where there is no racial component is old and boring no matter who is doing it. Yes, Dowd is an idiot. On the other hand, her addled-brain managed to excrete a salient point: neoconservative foreign policy ideas ought to be considered a bad joke. Paul Pillar of “In the national interest” put it better:
“In some other political system, anyone who had been involved in an official capacity in promoting that war (in Iraq) might, after resigning in disgrace, retire from public affairs to tend a garden, write fiction, or make money in private business. But somehow that has not happened with many of the people concerned in this instance.”

Mr. Radosh,
I believe that Morton D. is accurate in his criticism of your piece. Yes, if analyzed closely Dowd’s piece is anti-Semitic, but that is one of the least obvious faults of the egregious piece. With all the blatant anti-Israel
garbage — in both words and actions (vide: Convention, God, Jerusalem) coming out of this administration, to fixate on the unspoken (but real) anti-Semiticism in Dowd’s piece is absurd.

The majority of Jews will never move to the Republican column. To them, Obama can destroy Israel before they vote with a party they perceive to be CHRISTIAN. The dirty little secret is that many of them are BIGOTS. About time you realized it.

Ms Down: “Ryan was moving his mouth, but the voice was the neocon puppet master Dan Senor. The hawkish Romney adviser has been secunded to manage the running mate and to graft a Manichaean worldview onto the foreign affairs neophyte.”

When people like Dowd say “neocon” they mean “Jew.” They mean Wolfowitz and Krauthammer and the like. She clearly says in her piece that the neocons control(ed) Rumsfeld and Chaney. As if Rumsfeld and Chaney weren’t neocons. Even if you take out the anti-semitic bits from her piece she still wrote a nasty nasty column.

If the GOP were to want to invite Jews to enter their “tent” they would need to move toward the center on abortion. If you ask Jews about the GOP this is the first item they’ll mention. It’s a signpost of where the GOP stands on social issues, and the majority of American Jews will never vote republican while the GOP plank is against choice.

99% of Jews favor baby eating. Even Der Sturmer was more circumspect than such a repulsive comment.

This non fetus eating Jew, who very much wants the Republican party to succeed has some concerns about that. So far in the past 3 elections we have Bush, McCain, and Romney. Maybe instead of blaming the Jews the Republican party needs to take stock about why elections are not going so well.

It is not about antisemitism. There is plenty of that to go around from both sides. It is worse because the Republicans need to rally the people around the central message, which is what? Mitt cannot lay down specifics and when he does he seems to have foot fully entangled in mouth. This is hard core politics, it will not work to just be somebody ‘not Obama’.

Republicans cannot seem to unite the party. Mitt is taking heavy hits from within and without. I want a stronger Republican base or the Democrat Liberals continue to take over. That could spell disaster for what we are here in America. We need a bigger tent.

Tomorrow is just another working day. Republicans need to do better or the nation will continue to slip down this slope. We need strong economy and strong defense against our enemies. Government is failing us and buying up our own bonds to shore up what we can produce in this tough environment. Mitt Romney is the best our Republicans can send out in response.

I want to help and work with the Republican party. Your post makes me less interested. If you want to win forget about the 3% of people who still call themselves Jews here. I know it is closer to 1%, the rest were born Jewish but have little connection. That is just a demographic shift which is common when an ethnic group assimilates. What about Hispanics, African Americans or Gays? Add that up and you have some big numbers.

“Secunded”? While there is an adjective “secund”, meaning “arranged on one side only; unilateral.”, there is no verb form. If one were to assume she meant it in a verb form, she’s saying that Dan Senor was “arranged to one side to manage Paul Ryan”. Perhaps she did that, or perhaps she thought spelling it “seconded” didn’t seem to match well with “Manichean” as far as seeming intellectual. “Secunded” sure looks more like a graduate school word than “seconded”.

Didn’t editing used to be one of the strengths of major city newspapers, especially those with national reputations?